The Full Works Concert: Thursday 5 February 2015, 8pm
Catherine Bott continues our look back at the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2014 by playing some of the highest climbers and dramatic fallers in last year's chart.
The highest climber in the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2014 was a version of the Coventry Carol: Philip Stopford composed his version of Lully Lulla Lullay in 2008. The original Coventry Carol dates from the 16th century and was traditionally performed in the city as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The rocking lullaby tells the story of the Massacre of the Innocents — when King Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two to be killed. It's sung though from a mother's perspective, as a beautiful lament for her doomed child. The piece rose from No. 248 in the 2013 chart to No. 96 last year.
The ninth highest climber in the 2014 Hall of Fame was Mozart's Piano Concerto No.20, which went up from 251 in 2013 to 185 in 2014. Though the concerto that followed it was a bigger hit, No. 20 from 1785 is still a classic example of just how prolific and formidable the young composer's talents were becoming. Correspondence from the time suggests that Mozart went up to the wire when it came to putting in the composition work on this piece. The ink was, literally, still wet on the page when he gave it his first public performance. His father Leopold described it in a letter to Mozart’s sister Nannerl as ‘an excellent new piano concerto by Wolfgang, on which the copyist was still at work when we got there, and your brother didn’t even have time to play through the rondo because he had to oversee the copying operation’. Mozart often kept the piano parts to his concerto totally in his head, so this would have been nothing untoward for him.
Meanwhile, tonight's dramatic fallers are Dvorak's Symphony No.8 and Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No.20 in D minor
Leif Ove Andsnes directs the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra
Philip Stopford: Lully, Lulla, Lullay
Christopher Gray conducts the Truro Cathedral Choir
Antonin Dvorak: Symphony No.8 in G major
Istvan Kertesz conducts the London Symphony Orchestra
Max Bruch: Scottish Fantasy
Violin: Tasmin Little
Vernon Handley conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra
